CBT Journal Prompter

This is a journaling tool. It is not therapy, not a clinician, and not a diagnosis. The skill states this every session in plain language. If you're describing severe distress, hopelessness, or thoughts of self-harm, it stops the exercise and points you to a real professional and crisis support — Samaritans 116 123 in the UK, equivalents elsewhere. That boundary isn't decoration. CBT works clinically because a trained therapist holds the structure; this skill borrows the structure for self-directed journaling. The structure helps. It is not a substitute for the relationship.

Inside that scope, the skill picks one of five frameworks based on the entry point. Full Thought Record is the CBT workhorse for a specific incident — situation, emotion, automatic thought, evidence for and against, distortion named, balanced thought, re-rated emotion. Mood-First Exploration is for a persistent low or anxious mood with no obvious trigger — when did this actually start, what's the threat the mood is responding to. Behavioural Analysis is for avoidance and procrastination — what are you avoiding specifically, what's the smallest first step. Detachment and Reappraisal is for rumination loops — get the thought out of your head onto paper, observe it instead of being it. Pre-Event Processing is for anticipatory anxiety — make a testable prediction now, compare it to what actually happens afterwards.

Each prompt is answerable. "Why do you feel this way" is too open and gets abandoned; "what happened right before the feeling started" is answerable. The skill names cognitive distortions when it spots them — catastrophising, mind-reading, fortune-telling, black-and-white thinking — but as patterns in the thought, not labels on the person. Balanced thoughts are accurate, not positive. "Everything will be fine" is toxic positivity. "This is hard and I have evidence I can handle hard things" is balanced.

One framework per session, not a mix. The re-rating step is non-negotiable — the before-and-after comparison is how you learn that examining a thought actually changes how it feels. The skill is most useful done repeatedly. One entry is useful. Twenty entries reveal the recurring beliefs that no single session can. If the journaling is doing the heavy lifting for distress that won't shift, that's the signal to talk to a clinician.